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Good evening, subscribers. Every politician does social media. Some approach it as a necessary chore (the Harper PMO, Hillary Clinton). Then there’s Donald Trump, whose people once (according to rumour) tried to pry the smartphone out of his hands for a day after his crack about that ‘Mexican’ judge. It didn’t take.

Susan Delacourt says Prime Minister Trudeau’s Twitter session this week with young voters went about as well as such things can go, with questions that were largely respectful and on-topic (there’s simply no way to keep Star Wars references out of a social media exchange with the PM, apparently). But usually, Twitter is a tank full of crocodiles raised on an all-politician diet. “Lately the Canadian politics stream on Twitter seems to be awash in toxic, partisan sludge; all the sane people, it appears, are posting happy vacation shots on Facebook or Instagram.”

Donald Trump wanted to arrive at the Republican convention in Cleveland in a helicopter. A clown car would have been more apt. Since the convention began we’ve seen one near-brawl between delegates on the floor, a plagiarized speech delivered by Melania Trump and a key meeting with party donors the candidate either forgot about … or deliberately snubbed, it’s hard to tell. L. Ian MacDonald says it all points to the bedrock question about Trump’s candidacy: Does this man have the attention span to do the job? “Is Donald Trump the right person to be sitting in the White House Situation Room, getting briefed and making decisions on this stuff?”

Ross Belot is back with a piece comparing two contradictory messages coming out of the federal government on the viability of new pipeline projects like Energy East — one from Natural Resources suggesting the business case is sound, and another from Finance suggesting it isn’t. “Building a business case should be a simple matter, but political handwaving about new markets and ‘national interest’ is blurring the line between profitable and not profitable.”